Ariya Banomyong, managing director of Line Thailand, said the Line Scaleup project was aimed at assisting Thai startups to broaden their reach by using the platform, which has more than 42 million users in the country. Under the project, the company is joining with dtac Accelerate to seek out promising startups under the latter’s incubator programme. The chosen startups could then have their development plans fast-tracked under the link with Line.

The vision for Line Scaleup is to help Thai startups achieve scale, leveraging Line’s 42 million-plus users and the average of 63 minutes a day they spend on line. This would result in the development of an ecosystem of services for Thai users on Line, the company said.

The one-year programme will provide Line Messaging API as the main tool for startup teams to develop their products or services at no cost, with an upgrade path|to an official account worth Bt5 million.

The company will also offer technology consultations with Line engineers to boost the technical capability of the startups.

“Thailand is still at an early stage of the market for a startup ecosystem,” Ariya said. “We want to help Thai startups scale up to offer their services to reach more people via the Line platform.

“Line now has more than 42 million users, or 93 per cent of the total number of Internet users in the country and they spend around a third of their time on Line.”

Peerapol Sa-ngamuang, the head of new services at Line Thailand, said that Line would work with startups “to build an incredible service on the Line platform and support startups in their effort to scale up to another level” with support from Line.

“For startups who participate in the project, they will receive funds starting from Bt1 million. The project team expects that more than 10 startups will participate in the project this year,” Peerapol said.